News Site Breaks Fake News Story About NRA, SnapChat

Snap (SNAP), the owner of the popular mobile messaging app called Snapchat, saw it’s shares go viral today, increasing more than 41% in its stock market debut. With Snap boosting its market valuation to $33.6 billion, you just know there’s going to be somebody itching to ride on their tailcoats.

Enter Mic, a news website that believes “millennials are inquisitive, have a healthy skepticism for conventional wisdom, and crave substantive news to spark interesting conversations”. On Wednesday, Tech Mic came out with a bold claim against the SnapChat, using NRA as their patsy… you know, for clicks or journalism or something.

In an offshoot article to the Mic’s story published today by Matthew Hughes, TNW claimed “Snapchat Wanted $150,000 to NOT run NRA ads on gun Control Group Videos“:

Explosive emails obtained by Mic have painted Snapchat in a negative light, after it asked a gun safety charity for a six-figure payout to prevent NRA adverts playing on its videos.

According to Mic, it (Everytown for Gun Safety) reached out to Snapchat in 2016 to enquire about an advertising campaign for its #WearOrange event, held on National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

“I just learned our News Team is doing a Live Story on National Gun Violence Awareness Day,” said a SnapChat representative.

“I would urgently like to speak with you about advertising opportunities within the story, as there will be three ad slots. We are also talking to the NRA about running ads within the story.”

Rob Saliterman, Head of Snapchat’s Political Sales, explained: “To be clear, the story has the potential to be bought by any advertiser, including the NRA, which will enable the advertiser to run three 10-sec video ads within the story. This is analogous to how any advertiser could buy advertising in a TV news program about violence. The advertising will not impact the editorial content within the story as our teams are independent.”

Basically, Snapchat’s editorial division offered to feature the event for free, and when advertising services learned of this, they immediately reached out to Everytown to offer them the opportunity to ensure NRA ads wouldn’t run during their event.

Even the Mic reported, “if the nonprofit partnered with Snapchat’s editorial department instead of paying the six-figure fee to promote its event through Snapchat’s advertising department, it ran the risk of having its gun safety message countered by the NRA, which strongly opposes the reform Everytown promotes.”

So Saliterman, who was trying to ensure Everytown (his potential client) wouldn’t be angered at a potential NRA ad running on their event, is now being made out to be a greedy villain for… doing his job? Gotcha – great story, TNW!

Hughes ultimately identified the reality of the advertising ‘issue’ he attempted to create. After reporting that “Everytown for Gun Safety is an advocacy group that focuses on gun safety and violence issues” and proclaiming “The NRA is a deeply controversial and polarizing gun advocacy group”, ultimately Hughes declared the “juxtaposition of an NRA advert alongside an Everytown video would be unfortunate, to say the least”.

Which of course was exactly what SnapChat and it’s representatives were working to avoid.

Once again, a salacious story about the NRA is truly much ado about nothing.